Confessions of a Sonics employee: Howard Schultz was cheap, cared about rich

It’s no secret that Starbucks maven Howard Schultz ran the Seattle SuperSonics into the ground when he owned the team. But a new exposé, written by a former Sonics employee and published on Deadspin, gives further insight into just how cheap Schultz apparently was when he was in charge of the NBA franchise.

According to the Deadspin piece, Schultz and his investment group wanted a publicly financed arena (a new one or a KeyArea refurbishment) solely to pander to the Seattle area’s super-rich. They wanted higher capacity, more high-end concessions and more premium seats so they could rope in millionaires and their $70,000 season tickets.

These were the justifications (team president Wally Walker) offered us to explain why we were asking for a heaping pile of taxpayer dollars. After Walker’s spiel, a member of the sales staff asked the fateful question: “Wally, what will this arena upgrade do for Joe Sixpack—the regular fan?”

Dead silence.

After an uncomfortable few seconds, Walker said, “Well, nothing.” The wind went out of me. It was as if he’d punched me in the stomach. Walker tried to backtrack, but the damage had been done.

The team’s previous owner, Barry Ackerley, used to give holiday gifts to the Sonics front-office staff. When Schultz took over, that tradition stopped. Once the complaints reached Schultz, he decided to give the Sonics employees Starbucks gift cards. How much was on them? $3.50. Barely enough for a latte. And, at the time, everyday customers couldn’t buy a Starbucks gift card loaded with less than $5.

This nickel-and-diming of the team permeated Schultz’s arena efforts. While the Seahawks and Mariners spent money to lobby the legislature aggressively behind the scenes, Schultz tried to make his push on the cheap, and it cost Seattle the team.

Clay Bennett holds up the Sonics jersey Howard Schultz gave him at a news conference July 18, 2008. (Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

Repanich recalls the day of the announcement that Schultz had sold the team to Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett, and how Repanich was used as a PR pawn for the TV cameras as Bennett bought souvenirs from the Sonics team store. Repanich admits he was put in the shot to show Bennett relating to a “young Seattleite.”

The cameras left, and I wasn’t needed anymore. Clay crawled into his car with a lackey, leaving me alone outside the team shop in the drizzle. I watched them pull away without offering me a ride to the office. I walked down the hill and went back to work.

Once Bennett had taken over, things didn’t get any better for Sonics employees. To impress Bennett, Repanich guesses, team executives banned “casual Fridays,” saying jeans were unprofessional. This, of course, was in Seattle. Repanich organized a kind of coup, inspiring his coworkers to wear black slacks and black dress shirts to mourn “the death of morale.”

I felt beaten down. Whatever faith I’d had in the club’s leadership was gone. They ran the team almost as if they wanted us to quit, a guy mistreating his girlfriend in the hopes that she’ll break up with him so he doesn’t have to go through the messy business of doing it himself. An apparent hiring freeze precluded upward mobility, and the future of the team magazine I worked on seemed tenuous at best. The malaise extended across the staff. Employees talked openly in the halls about successful job interviews they’d had the day before. I began to look toward the exit myself and landed a new job at Microsoft. I wasn’t going down with the ship.